Coliseum Books to Close Permanently by Year's End

By THOMAS J. LUECK

Published: October 3, 2006

For Coliseum Books, a Manhattan bastion of independent bookselling since the early 1970's, the curtain is apparently closing on a second and final act.

''I believe we will simply disappear,'' George S. Leibson, a founder and co-owner, said yesterday in the store's second-floor office on 42nd Street opposite Bryant Park, as he composed a poster to inform customers that Coliseum had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

''The book business has changed a great deal,'' Mr. Leibson said.

The bankruptcy filing, entered on Thursday in Federal District Court in Manhattan, has been reported by The New York Post and The New York Sun. It comes at a time of financial troubles for independent book retailers across the nation.

The reasons may be obvious to anyone who has shopped for book discounts on the Internet or spent time pawing through books that they have no intention of buying at one of the thousands of chain bookstores across the nation.

Technology and business scale have conspired to choke off many of the independents. In Manhattan, Coliseum has been among a handful of survivors, and now joins an endangered list that includes the 86-year-old Gotham Book Mart, which for financial reasons faces eviction from its space at 16 East 46th Street.

An official closing date for Coliseum, at 11 West 42nd Street, has not been announced, but Mr. Leibson said the cafe section would close on Friday and the store itself by the end of the year.

In the meantime, a book clearance sale is being planned. He said customers should check the store's Web site at coliseumbooks.com to stay abreast of the clearance and the planned closing.

''It would be nice to think we could stay open until Christmas, but we can't,'' Mr. Leibson said. Deeply in arrears with creditors and book vendors, he said, Coliseum cannot order new inventory without paying in advance from a bank account that is running dry.

Mr. Leibson and two partners opened Coliseum at 57th Street and Broadway in 1974, and thrived in that location until 2002, when their lease expired. Rather than accept a doubling of their rent, they closed.

After the closing, Coliseum ceased to exist for 18 months. But when it reopened in June 2003 on 42nd Street, the location seemed promising. It was, and remains, something of a new magnet of literary New York. The store is directly across the street from the recently refurbished main branch of the New York Public Library, and from the Bryant Park Reading Room, where visitors lounge and authors conduct book signings under a canopy of the park's towering London plane trees.

With the 42nd Street location, Mr. Leibson made a concession to the evolving world of book merchandising by including a cafe in the store.

Selling over the Internet, however, was not part of the business plan. ''How could we ever compete with Amazon.com?'' Mr. Leibson said yesterday.

In the end, though, the cachet of the store's 42nd Street location did little to attract paying customers. Although foot traffic outside is heavy, and the store's aisles are often filled with browsers, sales have proven disappointing, Mr. Leibson said.

Unlike the Columbus Circle store, where most customers were residents of the surrounding West Side, many people entering the 42nd Street store are office workers or tourists who browse but buy their books elsewhere.

''People's spending habits have changed,'' Mr. Leibson said. ''They can pick up their books at the Costco or the discount chain in the suburbs where they live.''

As for city residents, he said, ''They expect to do all their shopping in the neighborhood.''

Mr. Leibson, who has lived for decades on 57th Street near Columbus Circle, said the store had retained some loyal customers from the Upper West Side, but not many.

''I keep hearing people say that it is such a shame that we closed, and I tell them we are still in business, here is where we are,'' he said. ''They say that's too far away.''

Photos: The checkout line at Coliseum is often too small to make the store profitable. Many independent booksellers are in the same predicament.; Some people used Coliseum Books as a library rather than as a retail establishment. May Nazareno found a quiet corner to catch up on reading. (Photographs by Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times)